the needle

By Jack Brummet, American Poetry Editor


This poem was printed in a 1971 Whole Earth Catalog, in a section edited by Ken Kesey.  It was attributed to Robert Service, but was probably created by Kesey, or Ken Babbs, or some collaboration of various pranksters. . .

THE NEEDLE 

First, brothers and sisters and spirits of our sphere,
I wish to make one thing perfectly clear;
During these last ten turnings of a year I have been
Jacked-up, jerked-off, brought down, strung-out, and I've
Holed up, come on, cooled off and hung out, and I've
Rushed and flashed and flushed and twitched and I've
Sniveled and snorted and bellowed and bitched and I've
Been spaced out atoms in the heartless void
And a slightly-plotted tightly-knotted paranoid,
I've watched friends grin goodby as I spiraled down the drain.
I've had doctors shake their fingers at the fungus on my brain;
And I have called, friends and doctors, oh I have roared out my soul
From the compass busting bottom of the false magnetic pole,
But it was a place beyond friends or medicine's reach--
A senseless 3-D cry from a binary breach--
And the heartless void can listen but doesn't seem to care
And my call was never answered until the needle turned to prayer.

- "Robert Service"

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